Dr Donal Fitzpatrick is the Senior Advisor for the European Accessibility Act (EAA with the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design (CEUD) at the National Disability Authority (NDA). Dr Fitzpatrick leads on the NDA’s activities in respect of the European Accessibility Act, including work on the revision of standard EN 301549, as well as NDA’s contribution to other key initiatives at a national and European level. Dr Fitzpatrick also engages in activities across the broader field of Universal Design for ICT products and services. He has a particular focus on the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the lives of persons with disabilities.
Prior to joining the NDA, Dr Fitzpatrick was a member of the Faculty at the School of Computing at Dublin City University. Here, he conducted research in the domain of multimodal usability and accessibility, with a particular focus on designing solutions to make complex data accessible for blind people. He is the recipient of multiple national and international research grants, including a Fulbright Fellowship where he investigated the accessibility of cartographic data for blind people. He has widely published in peer-reviewed journals and conferences and was an Invited Expert on various accessibility-related working groups at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).